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Seniors overrepresented in crashes

Monday, May 14, 2018
9:28:09 MDT AM

Driving Miss Daisy client Colleen is one of many served by the local alternative transportation organization — a sector being pushed to grow by the University of Alberta's Medically At-Risk Driver Centre.
Photo Supplied

A statistical over-representation of seniors involved in vehicle collision injuries and fatalities in Strathcona County is raising questions.

Last year, 73 local collisions resulted in injuries while another six ended in fatalities.

As such, Enforcement Services decided to narrow in on “what causes collisions,” according to Insp. Chris Narbonne, which revealed an age discrepancy in crash involvement.

Bringing on a criminal analyst working with Strathcona County RCMP — also a member of the local enforcement team — Narbonne said the task was laid out to determine “why people are dying on our roadways.”

Some statistics jumped out immediately, including that Strathcona County’s 65-plus senior population accounted for one-quarter of all local injury or fatality crashes.

While Narbonne noted seniors may be more susceptible to injury in collisions as a result of their age, he added that was just one theory.

“What can we do to help seniors and improve their representation?” Narbonne asked. “Seniors only represent around 13 per cent of the people in Strathcona county, but they were about 25 per cent of the people involved in our collisions.”

However, Dr. Bonnie Dobbs, a University of Alberta medical professor and researcher in the Division of Care of the Elderly, noted the higher rate of senior involvement may not be so unusual.

“We know as we get older, we’re more likely to have illnesses and/or disabilities that affect our ability to drive,” she said. “So often, it’s labelled as an older driver problem but it’s not really age that makes a person unsafe to drive, but rather the illnesses and changes in what we would call their functional abilities.”

On a national scale, Dobbs — whose research includes identifying medically at-risk and medically impaired drivers — explained that 85 per cent of seniors between the ages of 65 and 74 hold licenses; while only 25 per cent of Canadians over 90 years old continue to drive.

“My suspicion is that it’s in the older group, as opposed to the young-olds,” Dobbs said of Strathcona County’s collision rates, noting drivers over the age of 75 may be more likely to be involved in such injury or fatality instances.

“One of the things that we all have to do is prepare for the day that we’re going to transition from the driver seat to the passenger seat,” she said, adding: “Most of us are going to have to retire from driving, but most of us don’t prepare for it.”

The transition, Dobbs said, isn’t often an easy one, and comes with fewer solutions than some may expect.

“The loss of your driver’s license is a pretty life-altering event.”

While that may mean accessing public transit, Dobbs said that’s not always an option, noting seniors most often stop driving for medical reasons and not as a result of their age. As such, their conditions may preclude them from using public transportation, with Dobbs providing the example of Alzheimer’s disease.

“You’re at the point in your illness that you’re no longer safe to drive, but it’s also true that you’re no longer safe to use public transit,” she said.

The solution, then, would be alternative transportation, according to the U of A Medically At-Risk Driver Centre (MARD), with which Dobbs works.

While the county does have mobility bus options, there are also private entities such as Care For A Ride and Driving Miss Daisy operating in Sherwood Park to provide seniors with rides.

Driving Miss Daisy would not provide The News with specific statistics for the number of rides offered monthly, with representative Laurette Phimester explaining the service has to instead be viewed from a big-picture standpoint.

“Indeed, transport is included in our daily living assistance services, but we might spend two hours assisting someone but only 30 minutes of this is in the car,” she said, adding trip numbers aren’t truly “representative of the assistance we provide to people of any age.”

Services such as Driving Miss Daisy are the types of programs being encouraged by MARD, which has been working for the past 10 years with communities to get such “responsive forms of transportation” implemented.

One such initiative was seen in Wainwright in 2013, where a population of 5,000 saw seniors under-served in terms of access to transportation options. Dobbs noted that at the beginning of the service implementation, around 20 rides were given per month, which has since increased to about 300.

“That’s an example of what a community can do to enable the transportation of seniors in a community when they choose not to drive, or they’re no longer able to drive,” Dobbs explained, noting MARD recently awarded funding to Sturgeon County and the West Yellowhead Region to take on similar initiatives, with the group’s support. Phimester referred to MARD as “an amazing program,” noting they have worked with Driving Miss Daisy for years.

While grants have already been handed out by the organization, Dobbs said MARD is happy to work with municipalities and groups to deliver presentations on the issue.

Strathcona County’s seniors are expected to represent 25 per cent of the local population by the year 2031.